Stuff

The Sun have tweeted tonight’s YouGov voting intention figures – toplines are CON 32%, LAB 41%, LD 8%, UKIP 11%. The Labour lead is up to nine points, the biggest for three weeks or so, and suggests a positive reaction to the conference announcements.

Usual caveats for any poll showing interesting movements apply, especially for the sometimes up and down polls of conference season (some years it doesn’t have much effect on polls, some years they are up and down like a rollercoaster after each conference). Last week we had a narrowing of the Labour lead following the Lib Dem conference, this week a boost in the Labour lead following their conference. Next up we have the Conservative conference – will the Labour conference boost be sustained so they end up the net beneficiaries of conference season? Or will it fade away again once the immediate publicity passes? Or indeed will the Conservatives get their own conference boost next week?

CHATTERCLASS
” In a democracy, the free decimation of ideas and opinion (and facts) is essential: otherwise how do people know what they think.”

Dissemination, perhaps? I like the idea of people not knowing what to think unless they are told – I know you mean unless they received information on what is going and and the background to it, so fair point.
OTOH, is the hostility of the press to EM, and to other mainly Labour politicians politically motivated, in the usual sense of being in support of another party? It appears to me to be of too low quality to be dignified by coming from any legitimate political motive. Hate or revenge, and the idea that this is how to sell more newspapers, perhaps, but it has more the ring of extremism than of any mainstream source.
As for the Beeb, God knows what’s happened to Auntie.

I take your point about providing access to work to “ordinary” disabled people rather than just “extraordinary” ones.

I think the problem with that is that the access has a cost attached to it, and the more a private company attempts to provide it the more it costs them.

For a highly skilled job like law, it is worth it (financially) because the price of the access is proportionate to the value to the organisation of the employee. I can’t imagine the CPS employing a “reader” to help the lady who does the photocopying.

But for less skilled jobs, or jobs where good staff are easier to find, spending large amounts on access would cripple many private companies. Particularly in terms of their competitiveness relative to competitors who don’t do it (either because they’re in other jurisdictions or because they simply dodge their obligations).

I am all for improving access to work for disabled people, but I truthfully believe that the majority if not all of the cost of this should be born centrally – either through tax concessions or (probably better) direct grants.

And there is one last issue. Proper equality means taking the rough with the smooth. If a disabled employee, with the access arrangements in place, is adjudged to be a less effective worker than their colleagues, then it is not unreasonable for the company to replace them. Otherwise you would have a situation where disabled staff enjoy a sort of “bulletproof” status, and the lazy and/or incompetent ones (for there will be some) will remain in post. That damages the organisation, demoralises other staff and creates a negative perception of all disabled staff.

I’m having to put (or leave!) an increasing amount of posts in moderation of late. Can I remind people that the comment policy is to post in the *spirit* of non-partisanship.

A good rule of thumb is that if you posting in the spirit of non-partisanship it should not be immediately apparent to a newcomer what your political views are. For a few people (I should add, only a very few – most people do make an effort), almost every post they make seems to be to defend or promote their party of choice (and its quite beyond me why they keep trying to do it here, when it’s clear that there are a million other comments sections elsewhere where it is welcomed!)

NEIL A
The benefit of assisted access to employment of the disabled is not only that it assiststhe individual and the company but also that it takes the disabled person our of care and dependency and to that degree releases a carer, so it should be expected to come at an equivalent cost. However, the mechanism has to be holistic and therefore needs professional support and expertise outside the employing firm, and so in the civic sector, as in the case of Kindred, which is Scotland supports handicapped and disabled children and their families up to adulthood.

It certainly sounds sensible to have some sort of joined up process which links the assessment of disability, the provision of welfare to the disabled and the assistance given to companies and organisations in removing obstacles to employment for the disabled.

You’d have thought that even the “anti-scroungers” would be happy with something that connected the assessment of ability to work (the Fit Note or whatever they call it) to the assessment of how able an employee is to function in a workplace environment. After all, if the doctors/OTs who make the assessment of disability are of the opinion that a person “A” can do “B” job with “C” assistance, and the state provides “C” to company “D”. And company “D” reports back that even with “C”, “A” is not working effectively, then what you are left with (allowing of course for error and prejudice in the system) is a conclusion that “A” is a shirker.

I am sure it would all seem very bureaucratic, but no doubt there is a contractor somewhere who’d be happy to organise it. Besides which, political philosophies aside, I am willing to accept that bureaucracy is often a necessary evil if it is the only way to achieve the outcome. The Holy Grail is not always doing away with bureaucracy, sometimes it is providing better bureaucracy.

Lab failed to get the 42 I predicted a few days ago and I wonder whether the difference was to be laid at the door of the apparent dissension over HS2? It’s not that many people probably care about the issue deeply, but any appearance of disunity always seems to affect polling adversely for the party that displays internal dissent.

I wonder if DC’s reported defence of HS2 today was perhaps directed at that apparent dissent. It would be an open door to push politically I would have thought. NC did so too but was not given so much publicity.

@”The benefit of assisted access to employment of the disabled is not only that it assiststhe individual and the company but also that it takes the disabled person our of care and dependency”

I know that this comment is well meant & I thank you for it-but I must disagree.

Access to the workplace for disabled people is not a question of “assistance”-it is a matter of enabling equality of access. The disabled worker does not want ( or need) assistance. He/She merely requires an absence of barriers.

Disabled workers do not seek work to avoid being in “care”. Those who are able & willing to work just want a level playing field for access to workplace so that they can be like any other employee.

The law requires companies to provide access for disabled people . And any company with an ounce of self respect will do so.

Anthony,
I don’t know about the others but as far as l am concerned this is pretty much the only site on which one gets the impression of informed debate,most of the time,even if,say Amber and Colin will rarely agree they don’t call each other names. The last time l can recall feeling like this about a forum was in a Sixth Form civics course, run by a Mr Chips, if l remember correctly. This is why UKPR is so much more fun than some partisan hell hole, or God forbid, the comment sections of the Gail or Muardian.
Keep up the good work!

@TOH – search for the mail and energy profits and see the outcry they have run with regarding energy price increases – labour promises to freeze and reform the market and look at their reaction? Pure hypocrisy driven by a bias – good choice of rag.

BBC has undoubtedly changed over recent months – there’s so many examples

I read the Daily Mail because of its anti-socialist bias and because my wife likes it. As I said in my post above it’s reaction to Milband was over the top, still enjoyable mind. The Telegraph which i think is still a fine newspaper was much more balanced as I also say above.

It depends on wheter or not your personal standpoint is right or left.

@”It’s not that many people probably care about the issue deeply, but any appearance of disunity always seems to affect polling adversely for the party that displays internal dissent.”

I don’t think they do care Howard. For most people it’s a railway somewhere or other.
And the disunity has not been headline schism.

Energy Bills are a specific factor which affect many people-polls say it is a priority issue.
So if the intial positive response to EM’s proposal wanes-we must look elsewehere than HS2 for the reason imo.

” 30 per cent of voters say they’d never vote Labour. The corresponding figure for the Tory Party is 42 per cent. The best part of ten years on from the start of Cameron’s modernisation project, the Conservative brand problem seems to be as bad as ever”

– that seems to be from a 2011 poll, is there a more recent measurement?

” The strategic situation for the Party is dire. It has lost Scotland altogether. It is in danger of losing the urban north. It has a relatively new problem with women voters, and an older one with ethnic minority voters – who will be one in five voters by 2050, and from whom Cameron gained a mere 16 per cent of the vote last time round. ”

“the emergence of a Wrong Right whose mission is not to win but entertain; not to appeal to the interests of new voters but pander to the instincts of old ones. The Fox Newsification of the Tory Party would bring it no more success than the same process has brought the Republicans”

I think he recognised the problems well. The strengths of the conservative party are its fiscal responsibility, its weaknesses are in its perceived compassion and tendency to divide. More anti-immigrant, anti benefit policies may be a short term fix, but longer term will lead to its destruction.

Apologies doing three things at once at the moment Paul. Don’t agree with your last comment really though but obviously you have every right to your opinion. I must say personally ever time AW has moderated me I have to say I have agreed with him when i have re-read the moderated piece.

Following on from Ewens post, it is like a breath of fresh air to come on here and read alternative views in a forum that does not, on a whole, get bogged down in petty attacks. Does also help that I am a bit of a polling geek.

I agree with that but of course it depends on what you mean by compassion. I also don’t believe all the people who say they would never vote for a particular party. I could if the party I currently say that about changed their policies in a major way so their views and mine were considerably closer.

I am not sure about the compassion but on the sensitive areas of Benefits and Immigration, there is widespread support for strong action. Whether Duncan Smith is the right man for that role is very questionable, he is very popular with Tories but a bit like Burnham for Labour he isn’t very effective, he just comes over as harsh and horrible.

I think the main problem for the Tories and coalition probably hasn’t helped this, Cameron never offers a strong vision, it is not clear where he really stands, so it is difficult for him to expand his support.

If he doesn’t win the next election, he will go quickly and the Tories have in my opinion the chance to elect a leader who will take them forward and they have some great options.

Norbold
Indeed, I was wrong (as usual) but it was a way of introducing a talking point. I agree with Colin that it’s not an issue in the same league as energy prices. However, it did look bad, publicity-wise between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning IMO. I suspect any issue is neutralised when you get both left wing and right wing commentators agreeing. (EU is also an example). I also agree with Phil Haines that a few questions arising from the conference fluff will be interesting to put to voters and I am sure AW and his industry colleagues are grateful for the poll question fodder being provided them.

As examples of compassion I guess I am thinking it is just looking more carefully at the impact assessment of policies.

A policy to make people free up under used housing and move to smaller properties was good, but penalising them when there was no smaller property to move into was bad.

There may be a policy of making disabled people go to work that we assessed was a good thing. But not providing the necessary support is bad.

A policy of reducing immigration when there is pressure on housing, schools, etc due to a high recent level of immigration is good. But sending vans around areas with a high number of legal immigrants with “go home” written on them is bad.

It is really just getting the balance right. The policies are good, the implementation needs to get better.

I dont think flanders is any loss. She’s very much an establishment economics figure – and her programme on Keynes, Hyak and marx was dismal . Paul Mason is easily the best economics bod at the beeb – the only one who will step outside the outmoded pre-2008 crash consensus.

A policy to make people free up under used housing and move to smaller properties was good, but penalising them when there was no smaller property to move into was bad.
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Including disabled people in the cap whilst excluding pensioners (who you’d think would be most likely to be under-occupying) was a mistake, I think.

As Anthony’s tells us often it’s the trends with a particular polling company that should be followed. It’s too early to say if there has been any significant movement following the Labour conference. We all like to get excited when the polls show the party we like doing well in a single poll but its not very scientific of us.

Oh – I see she has gone to a cushy job at JP morgan – her ‘spiritual home’ apparently. I don’t think you’ll have to guess very hard what her political allegiances are then.
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Tory? Orange book liberal? New Labour Blairite (Tony works for JP too, does he not)? Kipper (Farage was a broker)? SNP (Salmond was a banker)?

I’m frankly surprised at that Populus poll. I would have expected this conference to eat further into LD VI, because even the non-lefties among us have to acknowledge that Miliband did a very good job of presenting himself and his policies to his intended audience.

As I said before I have some sympathy with your views but i don’t want to go into it too deeply. I also worry that the cost of compassion as pointed out means a lot more bureaucrats and i against that. So the policies are right, how do we do it without wiping the saving out with more bureaucrats?

I don’t have a problem with advertising vans so we don’t agree on that one.

The trouble is we have two trends with two different pollsters, and the two trends seem to bear no correlation to one another.

(This probably tells us something important about the underlying assumptions of the two pollsters- ie. when YouGov and Populus give us their “headline VI”s they are actually tracking two slightly different metrics- but I don’t know what exactly.)